Last night saw our latest "foray" into WW2-Graham was in charge of the German forces,whilst Brian and Paul were in command of the British-I sat this one out,as I thought up the scenario and a few "surprises" for the commanders,plus I am really not that interested in the period,although I do find it fascinating,with all the different kinds of tanks,weapons,tactics etc.!!!
This is the scenario,on the face of it it looks fairly straightforward,however on move number two,from the top left hand corner of the map,came two platoons of Para's who had landed by glider,and whose mission was to capture the southern hill and "blow" the bridge!
On the German side,two platoons of elite Panzer Grenadiers were travelling by train,to the town,to bolster the defence,and of course the British had no idea of this,nor of the Jagpanther tank hidden behind the Northern hill!!!
This shows the rather spectacular terrain,before any troops were put on the board,the hill in the foreground had a HMG in position to cover the bridge and ford,which as it turned out,did enormous damage to the attacking Para's,coming from the left of the photo!!
Brian is moving his Cromwell tanks against the ford,whilst masking his flank with a Sherman and a Firefly-Paul has moved up to the farm,and has sent a small out-flanking force against the left hand side of the town-all is looking good!
Graham's reaction was swift and decisive-he has sent a Mark 4 out of the town and a Panther towards the bridge,to try and stop the ford being used-will he succeed?
The Para's,and their jeep transport,have come under fire from the HMG on the southern hill-one jeep is knocked out and the platoon is taking casualties-plus Graham had sent some infantry from the town to support the Panther,and they too are giving the Para's hell!!!!
The Panzer Grenadiers have left the train and are moving to block Paul's out-flanking move,whilst the Mark4 and Shermans are battling it out on the right-we had all kinds of action,including Anti-tank guns,mortars,and infantry small arms firing-it all looked very good.
The "hidden" JagPanther has made an appearance,much to the dismay of the British commanders,and is giving the Shermans a right old kicking,backed up by the Mark4.
Brian has managed to get a Cromwell shot up,and has blocked the ford!!Meanwhile the attacking Para's are being shot to pieces-things are not looking good for the British!!
With some street fighting going on,and tanks blazing away at each other(going in favour of the Germans!) and the Para's being held up,and the ford blocked-the British "High Command" decided that they had failed in their mission,and the Germans were declared the winners!
This was a spectacular game to watch,and I'm sure that if the "boys" come up with future scenarios,this period will become a regular feature of our club games.
The above photo is the starting point of our game last night-we actually had two games with the same theme,of sinking the Bismark!
The Hood and the Bismark are models I bought from "Atlas Editions" for £1.99 each,the Spitfires and Stuka's are made by a company called "Tootsie Toys" and are 1.75 inches long,quite hard to come by and very collectable-the "bombers" are cheap plastic toys which I found lying around in a box,but which fitted the bill nicely-the other two players are just a couple of old guys who come along to my house every now and then!!!!
I have combined the two game's photographs,just to show the games and the way they were played-we had a good laugh,and the Bismark was sunk-twice!!
This is the task force,commanded by Brian and Paul,my forces,of Bismark,3 Stuka's and a submarine,were off the board but marked on a map.
First "blood" to the Luftwaffe! a Spitfire goes down in a trail of smoke!!
Surprise,Surprise!!-Paul has sailed the Hood (in a pre-set course) right into my trap-my submarine makes its appearance and looses its torpedoes-However very little damage was caused to the hull,but the rudder was damaged-hurrah.
Paul fired his depth charges at the sub. and caused it to evade,never to be seen again!!
In the background you can see a massive "dog-fight" going on.
The Bismark has been found,lurking in a Fjord,and with no Luftwaffe protection(Brian has shot them all down!!) a pincer movement,involving the Manchester(?) bomber and the Hudson(?) torpedo plane is about to "DO" for the German battleship-game number one is over!
For the second game,I decided to go on the offensive,and attacked the British force.This shot shows the Bismark giving the Hood a "broadside",unfortunately,Hood fired back and caused an awful lot more damage to my deck and guns,than I had caused it-woe is me!!
Astute readers will have noticed in the background,that each Spitfire has a Giant figure behind it!!-these are figures of famous WW2 aces,including Douglas Bader,Jonnie Johnston etc-just to add a personal touch-I felt really bad when I shot poor old Bader down!!
Brian's submarine has "popped" up and fired his torpedoes into the Bismark at very close range!! thus sealing the fate of the ship-again!!
We all enjoyed this foray into WW2,and will try it out again,it was exciting and fun,but most of all the rules were easily and quickly picked up by both Paul and Brian-hurrah!!
Roll on Thursday,back to "figure" wargaming,don't know what yet.